“Ashley’s devastated once Bentley leaves and the way it all plays out, she’s ruined,” host Chris Harrison tells E! Online. “It really did almost shut down production. She was done!

Chris isn’t joking when he says that Ashley wanted to leave The Bachelorette. “She was like, ‘This isn’t going to work for me. I’m out of here,'” he remembers. “If this had been three weeks later on the show, we probably would have been done. I guess it would have been a 4-5 week show. It was very real that this was going to go down bad.”

And Chris saw the storm coming way before Ashley and tried to warn her. “It sucks — watching this happened as a friend, as a host,” says Chris. “If you have ever known anybody in your life that’s been with somebody you don’t approve of, you know there’s nothing you do. The more you push, the more they’re going to go in the opposite direction. You almost have to be like I’ve said my peace, I’m going to be there to pick up the pieces when that train hits you. You see it coming down the tracks and there’s nothing you can do.

“That’s the way it was with Ashley and Bentley,” continues Chris. “I knew this guy was bad news. I knew he was going to hurt her and there was nothing I could do.”

But despite Bentley’s explosive presence, some people may think that the show’s producers selected him to create some drama. “That’s where people are like he’s a plant and meant for this to happen,” Chris says. “This wasn’t one of those good TV moments. This really screwed up our show and almost ended our show!”

And it left Ashely completely torn apart. “How Ashley changes, there’s a date right after a one on one date where she’s different,” explains Chris. “There’s no actress, there’s no nothing. There’s no Bachelorette. [She’s] very raw, very vulnerable — and the rest of this season, she’s that girl and she’s afraid.”

BFFs — do you think Ashley should have let herself get so worked up over Bentley? Share your thoughts with us!